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Here is the companion to our “Keyword primer for Beginners“.

The “Basics of Search Engine Optimization“ is a simple 5 page report that is simply a basic introduction to SEO.  Please note that it doesn’t go into any specific details about how to implement SEO.

We will be publishing more reports in this series.

Right click and select Save Target As or Save Link As to download and save the
pdf file to your hard disk.

Download SEOLab Site Analyzer

Site Analyzer will be added to the SEOLab Professional software suite in a few days (SEO Lab Pro customers will get it at no extra cost).

The purchase links for stand-alone version should be active before the month end.

Please note that a rebranded version of Site Analyzer is also available.

CNet news reports…

“The total amount of searches on Bing rang in at 1.1 billion for the month of August, a leap of 22.1 percent over July, winning Microsoft a 10.7 percent share of the search engine market.”

Google remains at the top spot with over 64% market share.

Once the Yahoo – Microsoft deal is implemented Bing will have a much bigger market share and there will be  a lot more SEO related attention on Microsoft’s search engine.

We will of course use Google as an example.

Whenever Megan searches on Google, it is in Google’s best interest to make sure that she finds what she is looking for.  If Google were to show irrelevant or useless results, Megan will decide to check this other search engine called, what was that,  Bing?

The algorithms used by Google to decide which results are relevant to Megan is Google’s proprietary information.  Google is not going to open up their source code and tell us the exact way their algorithms work.

According to Google, there are over 200 factors that decide the order in which the search results are finally sorted and displayed to the user.

So, how do we know what are the best SEO practices?  SEO specialists try and piece together this information from… 

1. What the search engines tell us to do through their “best practice guidelines“
2. Clues based on the patents filed by various search companies.
3. What we learn by analysing the search engine result pages (SERP).
4. What common sense says Google and other search engines will want to do.
5. Ideas and insights from people who are good at figuring things out.
6. Opinions from people based on what they want to believe, based on random observations or based on some “school of  thought” they belong to.
7. Misinformation from people who have a vested interest.

Most controversies and contradictions arise because of  6 and 7.

The best way to separate the bad from the good is to verify things on your own and apply common sense.

You should always do this one web page at a time.  This makes it very uncomplicated because you can simply concentrate on one thing at a time.

For each of your key web pages, you should…

• Indentify the purpose behind the page. What is your aim? What should your ideal customer do when she reaches this page?
• Identify the main keyword phrase for the page and then craft a powerful web page title for it (the keyword phrase will form part of the title)
• Create a good description for the page and use it for your “description” meta tag.
• Identify secondary keywords for the page. You should always have a group of 5-6 keyword phrases for each page. Use these for “on page” search engine optimization.
• Craft the headings and bulleted lists that will be used on the page. Use your secondary keywords in headings if it makes sense.
• Identify the pages that you will link to. Remember to use sensible keywords as anchor texts especially when you link to other pages on your site. Use “no-follow”  if you are linking to pages that shouldn’t get  “link juice”.
• Pick the images that will be used in the page. Use images to catch the attention of users.
• Identify parts of the page that are likely to stand-out when you scroll through the page. Use colors and images to create the pauses.
• Make sure that the web page provides the user with whatever you set out to provide by not adding distractions.
• Tabulate the data for each of your important pages into a spreadsheet. This will help you plan your over all site wide strategy.

Lookout for a new software that will help you formulate and manage your web page strategy. We will be releasing a “lite” free version and a more advanced professional version some time soon.